United States Patent Application: 0100105962

We earlier reported that collaborative scientists in Texas and Saudi Arabia, all in the employ of Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation, "SABIC", had developed, and applied for a United States Patent on, a process wherein Carbon Dioxide, whether, we suggest, reclaimed from the atmosphere or sucked back up out of a leaky old oil well, where it had, by law, been "sequestered", could be catalytically reacted with gases containing Hydrogen and converted thereby into a synthesis gas suitable for further catalytic reaction, as, perhaps, through Fischer-Tropsch, or related, technology, and subsequent conversion into liquid hydrocarbons.

Our report is available as: Saudi Arabia Coverts CO2 to Fuel | Research & Development | News; and, it details: "United States Patent Application Publication Number US2010/0190874A1; Catalytic Hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide into Syngas Mixtures; Publication date: July 29, 2010; Inventors: Agaddin Mamedov, Texas, and Abdulaziz Al-Jodai, et. al., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia".

United States Patent: 4347063

First, neither Coal nor Carbon Dioxide are mentioned by name in this United States Patent, awarded to Exxon, which discloses an improved method of synthesizing hydrocarbons by gasifying Carbon with Steam.

Exxon prefers, for reasons we can only surmise, to specify "graphite" as the raw material; although they do confess that their "process will also gasify mixtures of graphite and amorphous carbon".

Further, the gasification is to be conducted on a rather intimate mixture of such Carbon and a catalytic metal, such as Nickel, Cobalt or Molybdenum.

Process for the conversion of a normally gaseous hydrocarbon to carbon monoxide and hydrogen

The title of the US Patent we enclose in this dispatch, relative to our headline label, might at first seem misleading, since it doesn't mention Coal, but only "gaseous hydrocarbon".

A close read of the full document reveals, however, that the subject "gaseous hydrocarbon" is, or can be, generated by, specifically,  "the gasification of coal with oxygen and steam".

And, the entire, though obliquely stated, purpose of this US Government-approved technology is to "improve" the product gas obtained by such Coal gasification, and "particularly" when it is to be used "as a feed for the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis", wherein, as the Disclosure states, "hydrogen and carbon monoxide are converted into hydrocarbons, including those in the gasoline range and ... alcohols".

United States Patent: 4235699

Yesterday, we sent you information concerning: "US Patent 2,128,262 - Carbon monoxide manufacture"; which was issued and assigned, in 1938, to New York's then Semet-Solvay Engineering Corporation.

The patent discloses, as they put it: "a technology for an efficient and economical process for the manufacture of carbon monoxide of high purity by the reduction of carbon dioxide".

Their process entails, in it's essence, passing CO2, from whatever source, over and through red-hot Coal, a concept that should not, presuming you to have followed our posts, be unfamiliar to you; and, thereby, generating what we would presume to be, if wanted, rather prodigious quantities of Carbon Monoxide.